I think the scalability issues you're mentioning are just a matter of how much effort we put in making things happen easier.
As everything in a computer is about software and writing code, what php and aspx can achieve in easing deployment is - IMHO - achievable with VFP/wConnect
We are every much aware of that with FoxInCloud and I look forward at both wConnect users, West-Wind and FoxInCloud grouping our efforts to make things easier.

About writing new software as a contractor for a client, it's obviously just like selling a car - you're not gonna pick a 10-year old model. No need to discuss that IMO.

ThN

I think the key to take away is the same it's always been:

If you have an existing product in VFP and it works well, it will continue to work and you can extend it as needed. For Web apps you can continue to use the latest front end technologies and mix it with the backend. There's no reason to switch and re-write, just so one can say they're not running in FoxPro especially for a server based application.

But for new development I'd be very hard pressed to recommend anybody picking up FoxPro. It's just not an ideal Web platform. Web Connection (and other tools as well) can make it happen and it's even pretty scalable to a point, but it's way more work to make VFP scale properly than with most other tools and platforms that you 'just install' and run.

I'm always amazed to see the cool apps people have built with Web Connection and how far some of these apps have pushed what Web Connection and VFP can do. It's pretty amazing to think that this is technology that's basically 18 years old and VFP which hasn't significantly changed in about that same time frameframe.

+++ Rick ---

I have loved FoxPro/VFP since 1990. I still use it a little, but I have also moved on. .Net really does allow me to go further that what I could do in VFP. Not because I couldn't force VFP to do something weird (stuff like shared memory and IPC), but because it made more sense to develop in something else. I do most of my web development in PHP/MySQL now. Why? Because the support is endless, there are great frameworks, and most important my solutions can run as part of more stacks than any other platform. I still support some old Web Connection projects I was hired to build and they will run forever, but I don't need a VFP community to rise up and restore VFP and then take it into the future.

The article Thierry posted is interesting, but I can't see it being realistic for a community to take over and maintain a VFP style product. Future computing platforms just won't leave the economic case for investing that much effort into a niche product. Actually, it kind of said that in the article :) recognizing that investors wouldn't touch that model. Developers aren't going to be convinced either, not when there are so many ways to develop software already being driven by well funded companies and developer-supported organizations. The products/platforms/frameworks/whatevers we use are created to fill a market-driven need. What is the market-driven need for continuing a VFP style thingy at the same level as other technology communities support their products? That's right, the answer is there is none.